by Danny Schechter |
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I am entertaining these questions while promoting. The More You Watch, The Less You Know (Seven Stories Press), an account of my thirty years in the news business as a mainstream network TV producer, independent film maker and alternative journalist. For the last four months, I have been trying, with some success, to challenge an industry I love to reverse its obvious slide into the gutter of gossip mongering, sensationalism and slime. And yet, the reception I've received just underscores the problem I am confronting.
Serious books written to influence public discourse have to win media attention if they are to have any of their hoped for effects. So media attention is indispensable. Every TV watcher today is aware of the parade of authors on the morning shows and newsmagazines. There may be hundreds of channels and thousands of broadcast hours, but there isn't enough time for every diet doctor, celebrity biographer, fitness expert, motivational psychologist and specialty chef, which just about covers the dominant categories in most of the big book stores.
My topic, the dumbing down of the media, the merger of show business and news business, is certainly topical. People know what a TV is even if they don't know who decides what they see and why. It is my turn now to share the lessons of all the poets, authors, writers, journalists, unknowns and well-knowns, who have done that uniquely American book tour scrambling for ink, and airtime. It is my turn to join the procession from city to city, hotel to hotel, with and without media escorts, squeezed into studios, crammed behind microphones and powdered in green rooms. Waiting for my ten seconds and my place in the incandescent glow of CNN or W whatever, taping the unlistened-to public affairs ritual for airing at 4 a.m..
My first surprise is no surprise. The network shows are not calling back. They may have endless time for the latest "Monica Moment", but little for someone questioning their priorities or questioning why so much time on every channel is devoted to endless speculation and titillation. The response, when there is a response, is an across the board "no". "We'll take a pass," "Not For Us." "We've Done that." Forget about Oprah or Regis and Kathy Lee. (Maybe she remembers the human rights show we did on her sweatshop-made clothing line?) Sure, I feel hurt, but I should know better. After all, I've spent 480 pages of sometimes overheated prose to explain how and why the big media is hostile to debates about its power, wealth and cultural impact.
Broadcast attention tends to follow print in the same way that newspaper headlines influence TV news line-ups. I've been published by a small press without the advertising clout and marketing machine that usually rates major write ups. I know that worse than being condemned is being ignored. Getting reviewed is critical. My first review, from an outfit called Kirkus, is uneven. They are unhappy because there is just so damn much to read. "Haven't you ever heard of having an editor", they fulminate, but then avoid any serious discussion of what I do say. The Publisher, Dan Simon, is nonetheless pleased because there is a juicy quote to be pulled praising the service my critique does for the nation. (Every publicists masters the art of accentuating the positive. ("A pretty piece of shit, memorable for its banality" routinely becomes "Pretty..... Memorable.")
Publisher's Weekly is next. One bad word and the bookstores might not order. But they like it and say it is hilarious and informative. Not bad. Next comes the Library Journal. More praise. So, what about the New York Times? The make it or break it review. It's there. In the back of the book review section, but there, noted briefly but positively.
Talk radio is more welcoming than T.V. Three radio interviews a day. Some on AM, most on FM. Talk shows with callers who haven't heard my brand of 'media bias' before. "Now this is new to me," says a man in Alabama who sounds like he's discovered the anti-Christ. "I can't believe what I am hearing." I am fighting to get a thought out before the segment ends or the host starts to wind down the conversation. I am an old hand at this; slipping in the 800 number, mentioning the title in every other sentence, plugging my web site, tweaking the interviewer or playing with a caller. I am on with conservatives and liberals, commercial outlets and public stations, Pacifica Affiliates and NPR outlets. Another surprise: how many people seem to agree with me. Perhaps I am not as much of a rebel enfant terrible as I think. After months of anguish and uncertainty, I turned on my own business to find that many in the mainstream then did the same, stealing my thunder. First it Walter Cronkite, then Don Hewitt. The Nation Magazine, for whom I hope to write, even published Ted Koppel dissing TV journalism. How do I compete with celebrities condemning celebrity journalism? Suddenly, media criticism is being co-opted by the very people who were once its targets.
Slowly some TV bookings emerge, on local stations and cable news channels.
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Is this a case of seeing the trees but not the forest? Isn't it obvious that TV has the power to influence what we say we want. After all, our country spends a trillion dollars annually on marketing, and advertising is what TV does best. In fact, I ask my questioners why we just don't call TV "sellovision"? That is what it is primarily there for. There usually are no answers. I keep wondering where the line is between the devil's advocate and the devil--why do smart people feel that the only way they can be taken seriously is to ask dumb questions? All the news from the networks is not bad. CNN, which I call the "World's Most Self Important Network" does a profile of me on its Show Biz Today slot. Funny, isn't it because my book exposes the merger of Show Business and the News Business.
Bingo. Other news stations are interested. That's the good news. The not as good news is that they are from Chile, Italy, The Czech Republic, Canada and Sweden. There ain't no books on sale in Stockholm.
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I wait while Bill runs through that days segments--the girl who is suing her school for the right to smoke, and the editor of a male magazine who is coming on to discuss what women consider the sexiest part of the male anatomy. That's a no brainer. I'm saved for last. As soon as I get into the chair, it's obvious he hasn't read the book. He asks me if I know Av Westin, my former boss at 20/20. I have written three chapters about Av and 20/20.
Bill goes right after my thesis. What's wrong with TV? How can you say that? After all, aren't we having you on the air? We do serious stuff. I feel like saying, hey Bill, do you ever watch your own show but, instead, I shift the discussion and ask if Rupert Murdoch is around because I'd like to debate him. I should like Rupert, he says, because he and his news channel have been fighting the cable monopolists. He says he assumes that I support Rupe's fight to get on the air. A trick question, but I go with it and try to knock it out of the park. I says sure, he should be on the air but so should folks with other points of view but unfortunately they don't have the $50 million it takes to launch a cable startup. Time's up. Its a draw. I guess that means that I can claim victory if only because I am still standing.
I did get to debate Murdoch, sort of, a month or so later when it was Rupert's turn to address the United Nations World Television Forum. In my book I describe how Ted Turner called Murdoch a dangerous SOB at last year's forum. But the Chairman of News Corp. doesn't mention his nemesis, but instead talks about how what a great future satellites are bringing to the world. He says one thing makes him mad. All that talk about media concentration and mogul bashing. As far as he's concerned, the real threat to free broadcasting comes from public broadcasters, presumably like the ones in the room, who enjoy governmental favoritism. No one falls for the bait.
Now its time for questions, And I decide to stay quiet. After all I have managed to get invited to this big time shindig stuffed to the gills with heavy hitters and the Secretary General. At first there are no questions. It's too intimidating. But Prince Liechtenstein from Austria breaks the silence and lobs in a soft ball. Rupert deflects it. I can't keep quiet anymore. My hand is up, and the moderator can't avoid it since no one else has the gumption to rile the Rupe.
So I ask him about the death of international news on TV, the 50% drop over ten years, the recent attacks on the decline of TV news from the likes of Cronkite, Koppel and Hewitt, and tell him how Larry Gelbart is calling TV a "weapon of mass distraction. That gets a laugh. How does he feel about it?
Murdoch practically yawns. What am I talking about?. This morning, he recounts, in the gym, he was watching his local station in New York and they had on lots of foreign news about Iraq. Never mind that it is a crisis and that the station is a mile north of the UN. Crises, especially with Sadam, are proven ratings getters.
I respond, pushing the little button on my UN mike again. "But how can you say that Mr. Murdoch, since it is your station that regularly runs World in a Minute, which devotes tens seconds on a coup there, and five seconds on an earthquake here. Surely you can't be serious. "I guess its your anecdote versus mine" he responds. Our "debate" is over. Afterwards, I turn to my neighbor who is disgusted that I dared to even question the great man. He heads the new American style Nova TV station in Prague which was launched with money from right wing millionaire Ron Lauder. He says if the stations are not providing news of the world, it's because people don't want it. Afterwards, one of his countrymen who was listening in to our short but pointed exchange told me the man is rabid. I have a short trip to Washington and a longer visit to Boston where old friends receive me well and get me on local TV and radio shows. One of the most cordial is the program hosted by David Brudnoy, the conservative libertarian who almost died from AIDS and seems to have been humanized in the process. To my delight, he is very supportive and only occasionally plays "devils advocate". It is usually the liberals who are more insecure and feel the need to prove how 'balanced" they are. Ironically, despite all of the hassles, the right and center seem to be more hospitable than the hard left. WBAI [Ed. the Pacifica station] in New York has yet to schedule an interview. Perhaps its because I haven't made freeing Mumia Abu Jamal the centerpiece of the book, or I've failed some another politically correct litmus test.
Slowly, the reviews come in and they are pretty good, although sometimes a bit strange. Like the LA Times lumps it in with a group of books on surfing. One writer in Portland Oregon refers to the book as a novel. He likes its content but doesn't go for my humor. "Too Woody Woodpeckerish!"
Yet somehow, despite my grumbling about all the problems of getting media attention for a small press book ragging the media, it is selling. Copies are not exactly flying out of the stores, but the "title is moving." That's good news. In early December, my publisher announces that he will spring for a second printing. And now I am on to a third. What's a rebel to do?
Danny Schechter is the Executive Producer of Globalvision and a first time author.